Research and Education in Mechanical Tolerancing and Dimensional Metrology

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Recent national studies have identified serious deficiencies in mechanical tolerancing and metrology standards and practices, and in the teaching of these in universities, training institutes, and industry. The central problem underlying all of these deficiencies is the lack of proper scientific foundations for mechanical tolerancing. In essence, tolerancing and metrology evolved from shop-floor practice, and are taught and applied as collections of special-case techniques. This project pursues four related lines of research to improve this situation: (1) development of a semi-formal mathematical codification for the main principles of the ANSI Y14.5 tolerancing standard, initially in the form of a monograph and/or course notes for engineering students; (2) extension of the codification with mathematical and computational techniques for analyzing the accumulation of geometric tolerances (i.e., generalization of one- dimension tolerance stacking). Such techniques are important in design for assembly; (3) linking of the codification to metrology practices, with selective research on open issues in dimensional and surface modeling; and (4) exploratory research in functional tolerancing (i.e., control of the effects of spatial variability on the performance of designed artifacts).